Good morning {{first_name|Reader}},

Beehiiv raised their prices. My revenue from this newsletter is about $200 a year. The new cost is over $1,400.

I could pay it. I'm choosing not to.

That decision is, in a way, exactly what this newsletter has always been about. It still hurts and isn’t easy to do, but this is the way.

There is a version of watch content I was never willing to make and I think you know what it looks like. It is the YouTube video that goes up 48 hours after a new reference drops. It is the Instagram carousel the morning of the announcement, before anyone has held the watch. It is the newsletter that publishes every time a brand releases something new, because the algorithm rewards recency and the audience rewards novelty. It is the review written by someone who has owned the watch for four days (or not), with an affiliate link in the second paragraph.

It is everywhere in the watch world, the forums, the Facebook groups, the Reddit threads, the Substacks, the blogs. The whole ecosystem runs on the assumption that staying relevant means having an opinion on whatever just came out. I already know what I like. I have owned it for years and understand exactly what it is worth. An announcement from Geneva changes none of that.

The implied message in all of it is that you have to keep buying to belong here. That falling behind on releases means falling behind as a collector. That the hobby belongs to people who can afford to participate in the cycle.

I wanted to write something different. Something that treated you as someone capable of sitting with what you already own and deciding it was enough. Whether you actually needed the next thing, and what it would cost you in more than just dollars to get it.

We are fortunate that I could buy almost whatever dropped this year. I thought about it. I decided against it because I already own something I love, I understand what it is worth, and spending money on a watch I do not need runs against everything I built this newsletter to argue for. The whole premise of Own The Watch was that buying less, deliberately, makes what you own mean more. That stayed true even when it would have made a good newsletter hook to pretend otherwise.

The irony is not lost on me. Own The Watch ends because I applied its own philosophy to it.

Here is what two years actually cost.

I spent close to $10,000 on this newsletter — Beehiiv subscriptions, paid ads to grow the list, tools, design, time spent building things that a newsletter this size needed to have. Here is what I built:

I wrote every word of it while holding down a full-time military career as a Public Affairs Officer in Alaska, finishing the first draft of a novel on the side, and trying to be present for a family in a place that does not make any of that easy.

The money I could absorb. The time I cannot get back.

Thousands of hours. Hours taken from sleep, from family, from the novel, from just sitting still for a minute. Hours I told myself were an investment in something that would eventually make sense financially. Hours I kept logging even after it was clear the math was not going to close, because I believed in what I was writing and I did not want to quit on the people reading it.

If time is wealth, none of this makes sense anymore.

That is not easy to say. That sentence is the whole newsletter. I spent two years writing about being intentional with your money and your time, and somewhere in the middle of it I stopped applying that same standard to this. The version of Own The Watch that could have become financially viable would have required me to become the kind of writer I started this to push back against. I was unwilling to do that. So I kept going at a loss, in every sense of the word, longer than I should have.

Stopping is not giving up. Stopping is the decision.

What I am most proud of is that some of you read it seriously. You replied. You pushed back. You joined the Inner Circle and trusted me with a real financial number from your own life. You shared issues with people you thought needed to hear it. A few of you told me this newsletter changed how you think about buying watches, and maybe about buying things in general. That is the whole point. That was always the whole point.

I built a relationship with a few thousand people who care about the same things I do. That is worth more than I gave it credit for while I was in the middle of it. (My subscription runs out the first week of November, so you may see another newsletter or two as I try to to write and figure out what is next)

The book is done. First draft complete, in editing now. The Cave: What the Earth Keeps is currently under DoD review, which is standard for federal employees who publish. When that clears and a release date is confirmed, you will hear from me.

If you want to be first: reply to this email with the word CAVE. I will reach out personally when pre-orders open.

I have been writing consistently for six years, almost all of it nonfiction. This novel is the first time I tried to do something genuinely new. I do not know yet what the next newsletter looks like or what platform it lives on. What I do know: it will be broader than watches, honest about money and time, and built around the idea that your attention is worth more than you have been giving it credit for. I will export my subscriber list and import it into the new system I use, whatever that may be, so be on the lookout!

If time is wealth, I am going to start spending it like I mean it.

Thank you for two years. Every open, every reply, every person who paid for the Inner Circle. It was real, and it mattered.

Time is wealth. Own it.

Ian

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P.S. Reply "CAVE" if you want to know when The Cave: What the Earth Keeps is available. I will reach out personally.